1. Adam, you don't have to post this, but I thought I'd share a toy run I undertook to Tokyo today. New TVC figures...5,000 yen [$32.50 - ed] minimum, and maxed out at 9,600  [$62.39 - ed] for a single figure!

Doing the math that's 25 usd to just shy of 50 for a single carded figure.

Not sure what made me want to cry more....that I still vividly paying 500 yen per figure, or that the yen and the usd were once on par with one another!
--Derek

I'd love to live in a world with $5 figures again, but the last time we as Hasbro figure fans had those for Star Wars was around 2004. We've had some decent $6 figures, but the 6-jointed figure is not something most fans are willing to accept - and today's pretty good $10 figures are more or less on par with a 1995 $5 figure. So I ask again, are we willing to trade away features for savings?   Also, I am required by law to say that anyone trying to buy toys not made for their country tend to have to pay a premium in some sort of higher secondary market price.  That's just the way business works until Hasbro makes good on its promises of global distribution with the multilingual packaging we started to get over 10 years ago.

Going back to pricing concerns about last week, one variable out of control is the free market. I don't mind "it's out of control, run!" but I do mean that when you're dealing with the free market on collectible goods, this is the sad reality of not living in the right market - if I want Japanese toys, I've got to pay an import fee. If I want the Korean Playmobil exclusive sets, the prices I see make me go "Oh... no" and I have to move on and do without. That's not the answer you want to hear, but Hasbro doesn't really do great at international distribution, a concept which I have to say seems increasingly outmoded. Why not just sell the same damn things globally if you're doing packaging with every language on the box at the expense of cross-sells or checklists or showing product features? That may be on the licensors (Disney, Lucas, etc.) or existing trade agreements - but we're a lot more global than we were 30 years ago. We just haven't caught up to it yet as a business, and by the time the toymakers and licensors and stores all get on the same page I assume we'll have all aged out of this.

The part that can be controlled is the specs of the product. Collectors that act as of money is no object, that articulation should be maximized, that all accessories you can imagine should be included, that costs money - and even more money when someone is importing a $17 figure into Japan, with the freight and taxes that come with that. My breaking point for "collect them all" was around $27.99 on The Black Series - they're nice figures, but I couldn't keep going all-in when "this is the same guy with a new torso" had that kind of premium on it. Similarly, I'd also suggest you consider a similar outlook - things can be priced out of the market. Maybe you make a list of stuff you want and buy someone's collection on eBay (hopefully on the cheap) down the road, flip the figures you don't want, and get a price that's less in the stratosphere.

It's really fascinating watching the maturation of kid stuff. Comic books more or less capped out around late 1990s prices, and a run of the mill issue costs pretty much the same as 20-30 years ago. Major release video games cost slightly more than they did in the 1990s and 2000s, having gone from $50-$60 to $60-$70 and offering significantly increased thrills and specs, arguably making them a better entertainment buy today than ever before. (Plus or minus ownership thanks to downloads and updates.) Action figures, on the other hand, have skewed to adult collectors and all toy makers are making what collectors demand - more articulation, more gear, more paint, and that costs more money. If collectors were willing to collect Imaginext or Playmobil, there could be a lot of $5-$7 figures, playsets, and accessories. LEGO skyrocketed as far as price-per-brick goes, but inflation and massive sets are also a factor. It's really hard to point at any collectible sci-fi/fantasy/toy thing other than maybe Hot Wheels in the toy space that have kept prices pretty low.

I'm starting to see some of the stuff I skipped - like The Vintage Collection Walmart Carbonized figures - turn up at collectible shops for retail, or less, and I've not yet pulled the trigger. It might be worth seeing if there are alternative venues to make your purchases later, because as we get older more of this stuff is going to be sold as people pay for college, or retirement, or the kids' weddings, or kid bail money. (They can't all be winners.) I don't think we'll ever see global pricing and distribution click in a place that will make everybody happy - after 29 years of the modern line, with inflation and fewer hardcore collectors, it's just not going to happen.

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2. A couple of my recent Vintage Darth Vader purchases (e.g., Death Star II) have had unfortunate folds in the capes when taken out of the packages. Are you familiar with any reliable method of smoothing these? I fear ironing may be too extreme / damaging.
--Christopher

I have no experience here so let's open up the floor - how about you guys? Irons seem like the safest bet, but I am not skilled in these arts on a small scale.

In your shoes, I usually just leave the figure out on a shelf and let gravity take its course over time. Eventually I don't notice, or it looks fine, so far anyway. I've also had things I've flattened between phone books, to varying degrees of improvement.

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FIN

I'm out of questions! Email me if you have one.

May 4 is getting more than "here's a reveal" or "here's a pre-order" or "here's a deal on last year's unsold stuff." Tales of the Empire, a series of shorts, went up and so far I've only seen the first chunk of it which focuses on Morgan Elsbeth. Not a lot of "Empire" as one might hope, but you do get some backstory that doesn't do a whole heck of a lot to enhance what we saw on screen previously. There are lots of good performers, with great animation in the style of The Clone Wars and the just-ended-but-you-probably-stopped-watching The Bad Batch. I admit I don't have a ton of love for most of the recent short-form animation for Star Wars, but I do like have something new for my eyes to chew on and I assume we might be seeing tales of Bounty Hunters or something else down the road.

But what about the new Hasbro toys?

Well, that HasLab got delayed. Which, well, fine. It's not like I've spent enough time playing with the Razor Crest, and we're still waiting on the Ghost.

What we did get was a new Hasbro Star Wars Fanstream. a new wave of reveals, and I guess we wouldn't be Star Wars fans if we didn't complain. It's not that there was nothing interesting, but "Jedi you have with a Clone you more or less have" sets are kind of old hat by now for 6-inch fans, and while I am delighted by the idea of making up new Rebel pilots - or I assume they are, if I missed a comic/book/game somewhere - I don't know what I'll be doing with them other than going "yes, this exists." I hope they're just things I don't recognize from an existing story, though, so someone can be excited for these like I was when we got all those cool pilots about 15 years ago in the comic packs.

I'm a little disappointed they didn't take the time to reveal any new Epic Hero Series figures, which are things I think adult fans would like if they actually got their hands on. They're well-made and stand up well, which is worth a lot to me. But I'm really thrilled they revealed the Shop Disney/Hasbro Pulse split The Retro Collection 6-pack, with a nice-but-odd mix of Attack of the Clones Mace Windu, Jango Fett, and Padme Amidala with Revenge of the Sith Anakin Skywalker, General Grievous, and Clone Trooper. You know, the plain white clone, which you totally can point to in the movie and aren't asking "wait did those make the final cut?" But it looks like a fun set, and hopefully means more are coming to give us another Obi-Wan, maybe a recognizable Clone, or Dooku. Wouldn't retro Dooku be cool? I think so.

Hasbro has been really good at delivering top-level character variants and oh do I hope that means someone is planning anything new and weird from an existing movie. It's great to see Super Battle Droids in The Black Series, and Darth Sidious is an inspired choice. But when I see "another take on standard Luke," when the existing The Black Series figure seems to be pretty cheap when you stumble on him these days, I admit I'm a bit concerned we may never get new weird aliens to help us escape the gravity of the same basic characters. Hopefully it will get new people to hop on, but I assume the 6-inch line's remakes outweigh the new stuff at this point as they're really exciting for late arrivals to the hobby.

This leaves the HasLab 2024 project speculation wide open. With any luck we'll see whatever it is soon, and I hope it'll be incredible. (But in my old age: if it winds up being something I absolutely do not want... that's not the end of the world, either.) At this point I think the most exciting thing I could get would be a ship or playset that goes with a few dozen of the few thousand figures I already own.

--Adam Pawlus

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